A Scanner Deeply Ch. 05

Everyshore Region – Gicodel System

The stars looked different. They always looked different. Nate had long ago given up on trying remembering the star charts of each system. There were too many.

What he did know, is that he had stumbled on some very nice source of income.

Between deployments to the Outer Ring, he had taken an assignment with the Servant Sisters of Eve. Kind of charity work, according to him. His ancestry in the Brutor Tribe definitely gave him an in with the Sisters. Hey, he wasn't going to turn down an offer to go after some Serpentis and have it counted positively in his cosmic karma points... Who believed that crap. Not him. He liked to count the brownie points with them and the likeliness of getting access to some of those prized blueprints.

He also welcomed some action, finally, after the more than dull sessions of patrolling, encountering nothing but large enemy fleets that were impossible to engage without larger ship support. And even when engagement came, the battles were stalemates. No clear winner... just large fields of unrecoverable wrecks... His fighter blood was restless. He compensated by overdoing it in the training rooms. His body was much more buff than any of his comrades and, when out of ship, towered above more than one of his wingmates. His dark tan, chiseled face, bare muscles and dreadlocks earned him a wide berth in the mess hall, whenever newbies came on board.

Nevertheless. This one mission had brought his battleship class Fleet Issue Tempest against some tough opponents. With heavy frigate support. That guy had almost plowed through his ships defense before he could eliminate the totality of the ships holding his navigation down. But eventually, his years of training had paid off and he eked out a victory, very much liking the sight of his opponents ship crumbling inward to a hunk of twisted metal. He imagined the look on his face as the planes of metal dislocated and severed every portion of his body.

His sensors had picked up an odd thing. Not all the tissue of his opponents clone was rendered useless by the deep freeze of space. Oddly, there was some sample to be obtained.

And a tag.

Back in the station, docked and un-podded and showered, he examined the tag closer.

Holy shit! It was one a member of the Sarpanti family, according to the crest on the tag. He twirled the tag in the poor light of his nightstand lamp in the crummy bunk room he had in the station. The holograms danced in the clear crystal of the tag, sending shards of pinks, yellows and oranges across the walls. The body sample was safely stored in a bio-case in his cargo hold.

He now had some DNA sample of one pilot of the Sarpanti family... Wow...

While definitely a black market item in most Empire systems, since unregistered cloning was passable of the death sentence, this was a very unexpected twist of fate. He did know a few people that would be very interested in recovering this sample. He didn't know exactly how it was done, but rumors had it that some of the Jovian ships needed certain types of DNA to be fabricated. Heh, yet another piece of black market booty, those ships. Nate, brother, stay cool and negotiate your reward... He had never done anything illegal worse than transporting exotic dancers through highly religious space. Nothing to it, though, right? Stay cool, act tough, carry a gun, update your clone coverage policy... No-thing to it.

The dealer he had in mind, only known as Guidomarko, owned a small base off of one of the moons in a system quite a few jumps away, in one of the more lawless areas of space. He knew the dangers of the trek. He also knew his ship was more than capable of dealing with what might come up.

Interestingly, the flight there was uneventful. No ambush, no pursuit... Oh well, it happens. Although the less action happened, the more he felt on the brink of some thin thin edge of reality. He could tip one side or the other... of what, he didn't know. His wing mates kept telling him that it's the lot of all fighter pilots, to be so on edge... But the more it went on, the less he was sure he would like what he found if he did go one either of the sides... He came to think that, given enough boredom, he might even jump himself to whatever fate was his... Ennui... humans worst enemy... Did animals ever get bored?

With those very metaphysically enthralling considerations in mind, he docked at the small pad and alighted. He noticed a few other ships were there, other than the owners gaudily tricked-up frigate. He thought it looked pink or light fuchsia, with the reflection of the nearby moon. With all its decorative appendages and already looking like a piece of unfinished cubist nightmare, it made him think of a square-chested half-molting beetle. He doubted anyone short of Guidomarko understood the tastes of Guidomarko...

He reached the habitation module, now transformed into some kind of small bar, where imported liquors and other hallucinogenic substances were lined up on a transparent shelf under the burgundy and camo green lighting. Had this guy installed stringy melon-colored fuzzy carpet on the lining of the viewports? Projectors ran a continuous string of X-rates Holoreels on the spare spaces between the faux brick sections of the walls. Guidomarko definitely put the tack in tacky... Several individuals were lounging in the low-resting chairs spread out throughout the room. None of them looked very much at ease in the surroundings, all trying not to pay attention to anything else than the drinks in their hand. The place was more a meeting point than a fun hang-out. If there was one redeeming feature within Guidomarko, it was his ability to ply his network of acquaintances. He was a master match-maker... for every kind of illegal deal in the region.

A tap on the shoulder made him turn around and come face to face with what could only be the owner of every piece of fuzz in the place, judging by the fur lining of his... what? Glasses?... Who wore glasses?

"Nate?" the walking duster asked.

"Er, yes... sir?"

"Guidomarko, the one and only. Nice to finally meet you in person."

"Indeed. The pleasure is mine also. None of the ransom pictures on the police billboard do your fuzz any justice."

"Well," he chortled, "I try to keep the police network informed of the latest trends, but they seem unable to understand the chronology of it all... Fastidious automatons, the lot of them! I believe you have something to show me?" All business, now, fuzzbucket. "A potential buyer was in the area. I invited him to see for himself. He could hardly believe it."

"You best believe, my little Minelli reduction... I re-ran the tag RFID and at least the family crest checks out. I don't know enough about your local mafia to know all the members of the family."

"No need to worry, our buyer has all the equipment we need to do identifying. He's serious. He will give you the best price you could ask for. Let's meet in 15 minutes at the docking airlock. We will board his ship."

15 minutes later, having retrieved the bio-case, Nate was waiting in front of the gray door of the airlock, waiting for the beep on the other side. He took a few minutes to inspect his surroundings. Nothing out of the ordinary on this kind of small personal base. Good, things were going smoothly so far. The notion that something should go wrong in this kind of illegal transaction was firmly planted in his action-movie addled brain. He was trying to stay ready.

The airlocked beeped and brayed as it opened. He stepped into the tiny ship. From the outside it had looked small, but he figured it might be bigger inside than it looked outside. Wrong... It really was cramped inside. All kinds of cases and boxes were stacked ceiling high in the minuscule cargo area. Seats were covered in papers, themselves covered in moss-colored dust. He breathed deeply and stepped in.

"Don't touch anything" blurted crackly speakers somewhere head-level in the mess.

A woman's voice. He looked around. He saw movement at the far end of the badly illuminated room. A door opened as the flush of a sanitary airlock sounded and Guidomarko stepped into the room, adjusting his heavily buckled belt.

"Meet Ezra, Mr. Nate."

A chair rolled into view from behind some cases, holding a shape under an ill-fitting plain gray tunic, a dozen bulky wires running from under it to some consoles in the walls and ceiling, forming a spiderweb of sorts around the creature. Nate was sure that at some time, she had been human. The connection ports of the wires into her body had swollen and her body shrunk, giving the impression that the wires had completely fused with her bones and were holding her somewhat upright in the seat. Her wrinkly skin, where it was visible at the connection port, made her seem pachydermally shriveled. A steel mask covered her mouth and nose, fashioned and painted like a Japanese mempo mask. More tubes, those thinner, jutted out from it.

Her eyes were the only indication that she was alive. Dark emerald piercing eyes.

She glared at him from behind the tangled and grimy wires. "Let's see the tag." Nate took a step sideways, hooked the bio-case to the back of his belt and unlocked the holster of his small arm, then handed the tag to the slothy figure. "No funny tricks, stick" he replied.

She glared at him again and slid out a console from under a desk. She inserted the tag into one of its slit and watched as a flurry of figures and sketches erupted on the flat screen above. She ogled and was abruptly caught in a fit of cough that rattled her frame and made the wires undulate randomly. The image reminded Nate of a documentary on earthly octopuses...

Something scurried behind Nate and he drew his gun and pointed it unerringly at the source of the noise. A rodent. A rodent? How could the damn thing survive in here... As the furry thing scuttled away, he took a closer look at the walls. They were lined with all kinds of jars and bio-cases. Some open and rotten, but most in much better maintenance condition than anything else in the ship. Clearly the jars contained valuable stuff, but he just couldn't understand how the viscous-looking things floating in them could mean money... Definitely an underground geneticist geeky lab...

"Anyone need a drink?" asked Guidomarko tentatively, sidling towards the door. His voice rang hollowly off of the cargo walls. No one answered.

"The tag checks out, G." crackled Ezra through the speakers.

"Good" replied Guidomarko, looking sweaty and a bit relieved. "The DNA should be the shit you wanted, then. Name your price to this gentleman."

The length of the number of credits baffled Nate. Never had he had a bank account that large in his life. "Let's check your credit, lady." She tossed him her compact reader awkwardly off aim.

The moment he stepped out of stance to catch the reader, Guidomarko swiftly slid in and pressed the end of a blaster to Nate's temple. "Perfect, little drummer boy. Thanks for the business you brought here. Now drop the gun and hand over the case. I wouldn't like to have to explain to the Federation authorities that one of their ace pilots ODed on lead in my joint, now would I?".

So that's what they were up to. How stupid did they really think he was? He knew the defenses of these ships inside out and this little furry weasel pointing a very illegal gun at him might actually be fun to deal with. There were some pressurized tubes ready to shoot stuff – usually incapacitating needles – into anyone standing near the airlock. It would be up to how fast the wrinkled woman could call on the mechanism...

Slowly, he started lowering his arm holding the gun in surrender. When it got about shoulder level, he swung it sideways into Guidomarkos shoulder, knocking the gun's aim away from his head. Circling on one foot, he caught Guidomarkos forearm and swung himself behind him, poking the guys gun between his shoulder blades.

Just then, with a quasi simultaneous duff, four fist sized needles rammed into Nates human shield. The force of the impact threw them both backward, crashing into some shelves. Ezra shrieked as they all came down in a crash.

With Guidomarkos dead weight on him, in a mess of glass, papers and awash in viscous acrid liquid, Nate felt something slither on his cheek. The slimy thing was making its way towards his mouth. Holy shit, it definitely was... A cold wave of wild entomophobia washed through his guts and he scrambled to his feet. The thing on his cheek was getting larger and he could feel sinewy things snaking to cover his face. He tried to bat it off with flailing arms, dropping his gun in the process. The alarm sirens were blaring now.

Ezra shrieked again in the speakers. "No! Not the symbiote..." drowned in feedback, as the woman launched herself and her seat towards Nate, claw-like hands extended towards him.

He reached for the EMP Burst on his belt and it flashed.

He passed out.

When he woke again, he was sprawled on the floor. A few lights were blinking wearily back on in his blurred vision. EMP bursts were an efficient method of self-preservation when out of a capsule. It's always a risk for capsuleers with all the junk in their head – cognitive and cortical implants – since it essentially shut down any type of machinery with electrical connections in a small radius. He was lucky that none of the life support consoles of the ship were anywhere near him.

He stood up shakily and gathered his senses, his head ringing a bit. His cheek was still wet but he couldn't feel anything wriggling on it. He wiped the slime off with the back of his sleeve. Damn that, it was all over his face...

Then he saw the banshee of a woman. The seat must have stopped short when the EMP went off: she was propped in the air in the middle of her wiring, a few feet ahead of the chair and off the ground, head forward, her limbs a tangle and puss oozing from wire connections that had torn out of her body. Her skin twitched were sparks flew. She looked like a broken puppet. He doubted she was still alive...Hot damn, two bodies in one place... maybe he could make-up the scene. He reached for Guidomarkos gun he saw lying on the floor, to fake the scene.

And he saw his own hands.

Green wiry sinews had spread all over. He turned it over. It was even brown in certain places. It looked like veins on top of his.

– Greetings, host –

The simple intellect washed around his. Holy shit... He backpedaled and rammed hard into the wall... Had he just gone that fast?

– Leg, power, host. Help? –

He tore off a leg of his pants... Was he strong enough to tear pod overall fabric one-handed

–Power, hands –

The green veins were there too but were melding back into his flesh.

He screamed. What is this! He felt the images and smells of earth, leaves and organic life surrounding his thoughts

– little fuel –

Fuel?

– Touch people –

Touch?

– Collaboration, good –

Collabo..? A symbiot... of course... His mind eased one notch, but his muscles stayed taut, strung like a bow...

So all he needed was to touch people to "feed" it. Hmm... What else could it help him do...

***

A few days later, a patrol found the orbiting pad devoid of life. They found two more bodies... their head smashed in by a blunt object... some kind of wooden shillelagh from the residue on their skin. Organic origin unknown.